Felis Catus Temporus
by Lissy Strata
Summary: The Doctor needs Peri's help, but can she stop laughing long enough? Now a series of unrelated cat stories. (New chapter: The Eleventh Kitty)
1. Not a Kitty

"Peri, wake up!"

She mumbled in her sleep, but her eyes remained closed. Sighing, the Doctor climbed onto the bed and tried again. "Peri!" Still nothing. He poked her cheek a few times. Of course something like this would have to happen after she'd been out clubbing with those people she'd met at the lake. He'd have to give her a proper lecture about the effects of alcohol on the human body, but for now he'd settle for getting her up. As much as he hated to admit it, he needed her help.

Finally, he'd managed to wake her by jumping onto her shoulders and bopping her on the head. Even so, she'd only startled a bit before rolling over and sitting up. "Good! You're up."

She rubbed her eyes and blearily gazed at him. "Doctor...?"

"No, that's not the alcohol. As you can see, we've got a small problem on our hands."

"But Doctor..."

"While you were out gallivanting around, I was busy with some routine TARDIS maintenance. I don't know how it happened but somehow the chameleon circuit got crossed with the..."

"Doctor," said Peri, a hint of a smile playing about her lips, "you're a kitty."

"A kitty? A kitty! I, Perpugilliam Brown, am NOT a 'kitty'! I'm temporarily disguised as a member of the genus _felis_, or more appropriately _felis sylvestris catus._"

Peri wobbled a bit where she sat. "So...you're a kitty."

"If you want to get technical about it, I would appear to be a Maine Coon. Suits me well, I think. The breed is known for it's above-average intelligence-"

"You're a chubby kitty." She leaned forward awkwardly and poked him in the stomach.

"It's fur!" he said indignantly. Peri only laughed and fell over on the bed. The Doctor lashed his tail. "The things I have to put up with...go on, get it out of your system!"

After a few minutes, her giggles subsided. "How did this happen?" she asked, gesturing at all of him.

"Well, I was _trying_ to repair the chameleon circuit while you were out and there was a power surge right when I was...you're still drunk, aren't you?" Peri was lying across the bed and had started trying to pet him mid-speech.

She nodded, then said "Kitty!" and started giggling again. "You're purring!"

"I am not," he said, purring as she scratched under his chin. "Now if you've finished playing around, I need you to help me fix this. This circuitry requires something more dexterous than paws and I think under my instruction, you ought to be able to re-wire it in about..." he trailed off as he realised she'd fallen back asleep. "Oh, no. No, get up! You've got a job to do."

The Doctor put a paw on her shoulder to shake her awake. She grabbed him and cuddled him to her, rolling over in the process so she was almost on top of him. "Peri!" he exclaimed. He tried to wiggle free, but she just held on tighter.

He huffed. "On second thought, you'd better sleep it off first. I can't have you mucking around with the circuit in this condition. You'd probably turn the TARDIS inside out! So you lay there, and I'm going to wait right here and make sure you're really resting."

If he didn't know any better, he would've sworn the TARDIS was laughing at him.


	2. Who's a Kitty?

...yeah, so my cat's been excessively adorable lately, inspiring me to write more of this. Let's face it, Six is like seventy-three percent cat anyway.

* * *

Peri woke up to find a large blond cat curled up next to her. She stared at it for a moment, then remembered the events of the previous night. So it hadn't been a dream! Grinning, she sat up and ran her fingers through the long fur, noticing how the ends curled a bit. The cat snored.

She lifted one of his front paws and let it drop back down. Giggling, she did it a few more times before she realised the snoring had stopped and the Doctor was looking at her through slitted eyes.

"Amused?" he asked.

She smiled and scratched behind his ears. "I think I like this regeneration best."

The Doctor huffed. "I didn't regenerate, it was an accident with the chameleon circuit. Weren't you listening last night?"

"I was wasted last night."

"I remember. You came back in the wee hours of the night, barefoot, singing Beyonce's latest single and tripping over your own feet! I'm surprised you even managed to find the TARDIS on the first try. Do you realise we can actually go anywhere in space and time? And here you are, going on pub crawls! Why bother leaving the planet at all? Forget the seven moons of Balkor or the Eye of Orion, it's half-price drinks at the..." Tired of the lecture, Peri started scratching his tummy. "...at the...place...could be watching the...annual...geese-juggling..." The Doctor started kneading the air with his front paws before he noticed what he was doing. "...and will you stop that?!"

"Aww, you're purring again!"

"Am not."

He purred as she switched to rubbing his cheek and twisted so he was both on his back and curled up. Peri couldn't help it- she 'aww'ed again because he just looked so damn _cute_. "Stop it,"he snapped. "We don't have time for this, we've got to repair the chameleon circuit and reverse this."

"We?"

"Well I can hardly do it myself in this condition! Right now, you've got the only pair of hands in the TARDIS."

"But Doctor, I don't know how to fix the circuit."

"Nonsense! You can still follow instructions, can't you? Not too hung over to listen to me?" He rolled over, stretched and stood up. "Now come on. We've wasted enough time waiting on you as it is."

Being a cat sure hadn't made him any less bossy, Peri thought. "Okay, I'll do it. But on one condition." The Doctor cocked his head at her. "You have to let me get this out of my system first."

"Get wha-"

She scooped him up in a bear hug and nuzzled his head, going, "Whoosa kitty-kitty-kitty!" Fur standing on end, the Doctor yowled, struggled free, and ran from the room, claws skidding on the slick floor. Peri laughed and followed him to the console room.

* * *

"Doctor, stop it."

"Stop what?" He batted at the tools in her hand. She moved them out of his reach, but he reached up and took a swipe a them anyway.

She pushed him away. "Stop getting in the way when I'm trying to help you." Five minutes into the repair, he'd started chasing dangling wires from a piece of equipment Peri was carrying and slid into a wall when she suddenly turned around. Between instructions, he'd batted away pieces of circuitry, hopped up on the console and sat on important buttons, tried to eat some string he'd found, and managed to electrocute himself by sniffing an exposed wire. (Peri had to do a lot of coaxing to get him to come down off the wall.) "All you're doing is making this harder."

"What did you expect?" he said, hopping into her lap. Peri moved his tail out of her face. "You're trying to do this with a cat in the room! Switch the red and blue wires..."


	3. Australian Kitty

_**BloodLily16- If you're open to story suggestions, how about Tegan as a cat? If not, forget I said anything.**_

_**Yeah, sure. Why not?**_

* * *

The Doctor hastily withdrew his hand from the roundel, narrowly avoiding being scratched. "Now, Tegan, be reasonable." The only response he got was an angry growl from within the wall. Crouching, he stuck his head inside. "If we just go apologise to the wizard, I'm sure he'll-AAARRGH!" The Doctor retreated, banging his head in the process, and clasped a hand to the four bloody scratches on his cheek.

Nyssa calmly walked around the corner and handed him a first aid kit. "Here, let me talk to her."

"Watch out. She's not happy," he said. He took the kit into the console room and dabbed at the scratches with a rapid-healing ointment. A few minutes later, Nyssa came in with Tegan in her arms. "Ah. Feeling better now?" He reached out toward her, only for Tegan to bite him. "Obviously not," he said as he rubbed his hand.

"Tegan says she's not the one who needs to apologise," said Nyssa.

"I thought she couldn't speak!"

"She can, but not to you at the moment." Tegan lashed her tail and whispered something in Nyssa's ear. "She says...she's not the one who insulted the wizard by insisting magic isn't real and showing him up in front of the townspeople."

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C. Clarke, wonderful man...Anyway, if she hadn't been standing in the way-"

Tegan whispered to Nyssa again, who just stared at her and said, "I don't think that's physically possible."

"What did she say?"

"She said you can go-"

"All right, perhaps I was a bit out of line. But I still insist that it wasn't magic that turned Tegan into a cat."

"You're saying you have the kind of technology that can fix her?" asked Nyssa.

The Doctor looked around the TARDIS, then back at Nyssa and Tegan. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and instead went to the hatstand for his coat. "The wizard lives on the south side of town, right? It's only seven o' clock, he's probably still up..."


	4. Explody Kitty

_**TimeLord Prime- Maybe you could have Seven as a cat next and we could see how Ace reacts to it.**_

_**Never really written for Seven and Ace before, but...**_

* * *

A small figure climbed over the chain-link fence in the darkness and landed on the ground with a heavy thump.

"Ace!"

She swung her rucksack around to her front and unzipped it. "You all right, Professor?"

A tabby manx stuck its head out. The Doctor had yet to tell Ace how, exactly, this transformation had happened, or even where he'd found a cat-sized panama hat. "I thought I told you we weren't going to need your nitro-9 this time," he said, gesturing to the grey cans beneath him.

"You did."

"And I also thought I told you to be careful if you're going to be carrying high explosives and living creatures in the same bag?"

"Yeah."

"Just checking." He turned his attention to the building in front of them while Ace ducked behind a row of bushes. "Both doors are solid steel, but there's a side entrance that's heavily guarded. There's also an open window on the ground floor-"

"And I'm not to do anything particularly distracting to throw off the guards, especially not with the nitro-9 I didn't bring?"

"Exactly," he replied, tapping her nose with a paw. The Doctor hopped down from her shoulders and briskly walked along the fenceline. "Thirty seconds."

Less than ten minutes later, both girl and cat came tearing out of the building as smoke poured out of the windows. The Doctor ran along the top of a brick wall for a few metres before jumping onto Ace's rucksack, halfway balanced on her shoulders. "Ace!"

"It's all right, Professor! Just a miscalculation!"

"Miscalculation?!" Behind them, the building blew up sky high. Ace dove around a corner and concealed herself and the Doctor within a deep doorway, narrowly avoiding falling debris.

"Well, it put an end to the Cybermen, didn't it?"

"Oh, Ace..."


	5. Three Little Kitties

___**People like cats, yo.**_

* * *

The Doctor was understandably concerned when he found his friends' clothing in piles on the floor. Briefly, he wondered what they could possibly be up to this far into the TARDIS before he noticed what lay near the clothes- an obsolete version of a chameleon arch, one he'd put away in this storage room ages ago. The model had substandard safety features, so it was no stretch of the imagination to assume they'd triggered it somehow. But now the question was why they'd taken their clothes off.

He was debating whether or not he should go find them or wait for them to find him when he heard a tiny mew. There was a small, pale-furred kitten attacking the hem of his trousers.

"Now where did you come from?" he asked, crouching down and picking up the kitten. It gnawed his index finger. The Doctor chuckled, then looked up as he heard loud mewling from the other side of the room. Two more kittens wrestled on the floor.

Three kittens, three piles of clothes, and one defective chameleon arch. "Oh my giddy aunt..." he said as the penny dropped.

* * *

He swore once he recalibrated the arch, he'd dismantle it completely and never bother with another one. This particular model had been discontinued once it became apparent that an option to change humanoid beings into non-humanoids had been a terrible idea. It wouldn't be impossible to turn them back, just inconvenient.

First of all, he needed to figure out who was who. The blonde kitten was certainly Polly, but the other two both had tabby patterns. Ultimately, he decided that the one with four white paws was Ben and the other Jamie. With identification out of the way, the Doctor turned his attention back to the machine. Now it was only a matter of figuring out exactly what they'd done so he could reverse it. He began checking the system settings.

A loud crash made him look up. The three little kittens had somehow knocked over a floor lamp and were fleeing from the sudden noise. (Except Jamie, who was walking backwards, arched up and hissing.)

Nobody was hurt, so the Doctor went back to work. Several times, he had to shoo away inquisitive paws, and once he had to stop and remove Jamie from his shoulder. A short while later, he looked up just in time to watch as Polly pounced on Ben from a low shelf. At that same moment, Jamie decided to attack as well, and ended up colliding with her on the way down, knocking a yo-yo across the floor. Ben took off after the trailing string, Polly darted under an armchair, and Jamie fought his own tail for a few moments before running off.

The Doctor chuckled.

He made a few adjustments to the arch and a small panel opened on the side, letting three fob watches fall to the ground. Before he could pick them up, Ben bounded in out of nowhere, knocked two of them across the floor, and chased after one. The Doctor quickly grabbed two of the watches and pulled the third one away from Ben, who was trying to bite through the case. "Enough of that," he chided, turning back to the machine. "Oh, no. Not in there!" Polly had climbed into the side panel and the Doctor shooed her away.

The watches all looked more or less identical, another design flaw of the faulty chameleon arch, but by listening carefully to the mental voices within, the Doctor was able to determine which was which. Carefully, he labeled each one with a felt-tip pen.

Nearly ready, he glanced up to see where the kittens were. Near a stack of clutter, Jamie was wrestling with the end of a feather boa that was dangling out of a box. Attracted to the feathers, the other two soon joined in and gave the boa a big tug. The stack wobbled precariously and-

"Jamie, no!"

-toppled over with an almighty crash. Odds and ends went everywhere and so did the kittens. He found them huddled under the armchair, fur on end and eyes wide. With a little coaxing, he was able to get them to come out. This time, he held onto them while he emptied out a cardboard box and lined it with a blanket and the feather boa. He unhooked three sets of claws from his coat and put the kittens in the box to keep them out of trouble.

Ignoring the mews of protest and the scrabbling at the sides of the box, the Doctor finished resetting the arch, swapped out the old battery for a new one, and cleared a small area for the transformation. It was then that he realised he couldn't hear anything from the box. Quietly, he went over to see.

They'd curled up in the corner and fallen asleep in a pile. Tiny paws twitched. Without waking up, Jamie yawned and rolled over.

The Doctor smiled. Perhaps he'd let them sleep a bit first.

* * *

It was about an hour later, and everyone was back to their usual state. In order to deal with the memories from being kittens, they decided to blame the whole incident on alcohol and leave it at that.


	6. Kitty at UNIT

_**You thought I was done with kitty fic? THINK AGAIN!**_

* * *

It was impossible to miss the two cats. The commotion could be heard well outside of the old warehouse- yowling, growling, and fur flying. Backs arched and tails lashing, they broke apart and glared at each other. One had wavy whitish-grey fur, the other black with bits of grey peppered throughout. With resounding growls, the cats attacked each other again. By now, they were both bleeding from various wounds. One of them was bound to give out soon.

From somewhere off to the side, a UNIT soldier fired a tranquilizer gun. The first dart hit the Doctor right in the flank, and the second in the Master's shoulder. If he hadn't been so busy trying to keep his throat from being ripped out, he would have realised sooner he'd been hit. As it were, he didn't notice until the effects of the sedative started taking hold.

His vision blurred and the room started spinning. Staggering, he fell over his own paws and couldn't get up again. He suspected the Master was in a similar condition. Around him, he could hear at least a dozen different sets of footsteps...

...and one familiar pair.

"Watch out, Miss. This is..."

"It's the Doctor!" said Jo, gathering up the white cat in her arms and pulling out the dart. Across the room, he could see the Master being taken away by UNIT soldiers. "Oh, dear! You're bleeding," Jo said as she turned to walk out of the building. The Doctor tried to respond, but could only managed a garbled-sounding noise. Ah, well. At least it was all over and his adversary was safely out of the way. He relaxed and let Jo fuss over him until he lost consciousness.

* * *

He woke up a while later, aware of a dull pain in his side. Opening his eyes, he could see he was back in his lab at UNIT headquarters, but there was something blocking his view. Someone, most likely Jo, was stroking his back. He groaned and sat up. The thing in front of his face followed.

"Are you all right, Doctor?"

"Jo, what is this infernal thing on me?"

"Um...," she hesitated, not sure how to break the news to him. "You've got an awfully bad scratch down your side. You needed stitches, but the vet didn't know you're not really a cat, so he..." she gestured vaguely at the offending device, biting her lip to keep from giggling. "...put on the...cone thingy..."

The Doctor frowned. "It's not funny, Jo." He pawed at the base, trying to slip it off over his head and getting nowhere. Behind him, the door swung open and the Brigadier started to enter the room, paused to take in the scene, then hastily stepped back out with his mustache twitching. "What was that? Is someone there?" The Doctor spun around, nearly falling off the table before Jo caught him.

"It's nothing, Doctor."

"Get this ridiculous contraption off me this instant!"

"Okay, okay!" She fumbled with the fastenings. "Just calm down or you're going to hurt yourself even worse."

"I may be a cat now, but I still heal just as quickly." Once she removed the cone, he cast it to the floor with a flick of a paw. He glared at it. The door opened again, and the Brigadier re-entered, having composed himself.

"Ah, Doctor. Up already, I see," he remarked.

"No thanks to your men. Really, Brigadier. Tranquilizers?"

"They weren't meant to hit _you_. Besides, I think that's the easiest we've ever been able to capture the Master."

The Doctor swished his tail on the table. "I wouldn't be too sure. He's changed his appearance, but don't think for one moment that it makes him any less dangerous."

"Oh, I'm well aware of that. He's under constant guard until we've figured out what do do with him." The phone rang and Jo went to answer it. "In the meantime, what do we do about you?" he asked, referring to the Doctor's current feline state. He had no idea how he'd even begin to explain having a cat on staff.

"Well it's really quite simple. All I have to do is-"

"Brigadier, it's for you," said Jo. From her expression, it didn't look like good news. Arching an eyebrow, the Brigadier took the phone.

"Yes?" He listened for a moment, then... "What do you mean he escaped?...They did WHAT?!" The Brigadier was furious. _"I don't care how cute he is, you are not to take the prisoner out for tummy rubs!"_ he bellowed into the phone. "That is the Master! Get after him this instant!" He slammed down the receiver and turned to Jo and the Doctor. "He's gone. Escaped. Two men in hospital. So help me, the next man who plays with the damn cat is getting a court-martial!"

"It's worse than I thought," said the Doctor. "He's using his telepathic powers to magnify the human brain's susceptibility to cats."

"What?" snapped the Brigadier.

"When humans come in close proximity to small, furry mammals, they become more prone to irrationality. Take Jo, for instance."

Jo frowned, "Why? I'm not doing anything!"

"Look at your hands, Jo."

She did. Upon realising she was petting the Doctor she quickly pulled away, blushing. If he minded, he didn't let on. Instead, the Doctor had Jo help him start rigging up a device that would turn him back to normal while the Brigadier left to oversee things. Roughly fifteen minutes later, Sergeant Benton came in to announce they'd found the Master.

"You've captured him?"

"Well, no. But we've found where he's hiding. Number four, Witterclose Drive. He's...um...well, there's a little old lady who lives there..."

"Oh, no," said Jo. "He didn't hurt her, did he?"

"No, I think he's using her as cover. We can't do anything at the moment."

"Why not?"

"Think about it, Jo," said the Doctor. "What would it look like, UNIT troops forcing a poor old granny to hand over her cat?"

It would look positively barbaric, Jo thought. They'd have to figure out another way... "I've got an idea," she said. "Get me a basket..."

* * *

Mrs. Nesbit was delighted to have something to fuss over again. Her grandchildren were all grown up and didn't visit nearly as often. The old house was lonely and empty these days. But then a cat turned up in her garden. Now she had a new friend purring away on the windowsill, fastidiously cleaning the last bit of cream from his whiskers.

She'd need a few tins of meat if she was going to keep him, she supposed, so she took her coat and cane and started down the street. Barely a few doors down, she saw a young woman sitting on the pavement next to a wicker basket, crying.

"Goodness, child. What's the matter?"

The girl wiped away her tears. "Oh, I'm looking for my cat. I'm going away to my aunt's house and I wanted to take Mittens with me, but he got out of his basket and..." A fresh wave of sobs wracked her body. "Sorry. It's probably silly, to be worried so much over a cat. Only...my mum gave him to me before she...she..."

Mrs. Nesbit handed the girl a tissue. "I'm so sorry, dearie. What did he look like? Maybe I can help."

"He's got this sort of blackish-grey colour with two white paws."

That was the very cat in Mrs. Nesbit's house. She'd thought it seemed too tame for a stray. Oh, well. This poor girl needed it more. "Come with me, dear."

* * *

"Well played, Miss Grant."

"I don't know why you sound so pleased. You're the one in the basket."

"Perhaps it is because I can accept defeat gracefully?"

"That's nothing like you."

"True. I'm planning my escape as we speak. Would you care to take a look?"

She thought she ought to; it had been suspiciously easy to get the Master inside the basket. Jo almost looked, but stopped herself. "Oh, no. I'm not falling for that old trick. I'm not letting you hypnotize me that easy!"

"Nothing gets past you, Miss Grant."

She should have looked. She would have seen him reaching through the bars and unlatching the cover, and would have been in a better position to stop him leaping out. As it were, there was another chase through the streets ending at his TARDIS, which vanished before UNIT could even reach it. "Never mind it, Jo," said the Doctor, hopping onto the lab bench. "We'll get him next time. And it might be a while, too. I've got a feeling he's going to be a cat for a long time."

"Why?"

"Because," he winked, "he hasn't got a top-quality UNIT assistant to help him."

Jo smiled. "Oh, Doctor."

* * *

Mrs. Nesbit sat down to breakfast with her new companion purring on the windowsill. That morning, someone had left a familiar basket on her doorstep. Inside had been a skinny orange and white cat along with a note that read _"Found this one wandering the base. Thought you might like a furry friend. -Jo Grant."_

The old house didn't feel so empty anymore.


	7. The Eleventh Kitty

_You know you needed more kitty fic today._

* * *

"Amyyyyy!" moaned the Doctor.

"No."

"Please?"

"I said no!"

"Hmph! Fine..."

Rory followed the voices through the library to find where Amy and the Doctor were. He rounded a corner and nearly tripped over the lanky tom cat. "Ah! Rory! Rory, Rory, Rory...!" He was wearing a little cat-sized shark costume. "Get this off me, would you?" Rory knelt down and obliged. Was Amy forcing the Doctor to play dress-up?

"Thanks!" The Doctor ran off down a row of shelves, muttering, "Sharks..._definitely_ not cool..." Slightly confused, Rory went the opposite direction and found his wife sitting on a large, plush sofa. A magazine was open in her lap. He went and sat beside her.

"What's with this?" Rory asked, holding up the costume. Amy glanced up and grimaced.

"You didn't take it off for him, did you?"

"Yes. Amy, you can't just dress him like he's a doll."

"It's not like that. He-"

Before she could finish, the Doctor hopped onto the arm of the sofa, walked across Amy's lap to Rory's, and started shoving a purple waistcoat and a bow tie into his hands. "Now help me put these on," he demanded.

"What?"

Amy groaned. "Doctor, it stopped being funny an hour ago."

"But I've still got more outfits!"

"Rory and I are not going to dress you up all afternoon!"

Completely taken aback, Rory tried to diffuse the situation by obliging the Doctor. "No, it's all right..." He slipped on the waistcoat and tied the tie around the cat's neck, who gave Amy a triumphant look.

"Rory, do not get him started again," warned Amy as the Doctor jumped down and ran off.

"Why not?"

"Because," she said as she pulled out her mobile, "of this." There were quite a few pictures of the Doctor in various cat-sized outfits- cowboy hats, sombreros, a variety of jumpers, a tuxedo, a bunny costume, a suit, a kilt, the most garish coat of many colors, a velvet smoking jacket, a twenty-foot scarf, a Hogwarts uniform... Amy was in the earlier pictures, smiling, but soon it was just the Doctor.

Behind him, the Doctor hopped up onto the back of the couch and dangled a fez in front of Rory's face. "Just one more. I can't get the chin strap with these paws." Rory glanced at Amy who deliberately ignored him and went back to her magazine.

Sighing, he put the fez on the cat.


End file.
